This year I thought I would try my luck again with my newly-cmpleted ms of a historical novel about the railway pioneers George and Robert Stephenson, Mr Stephenson's Regret. I have just discovered that I have so far reached the quarter final stage of the 2011 Award, with the semi-finalists to be announced on 26 April.
At this stage an opening extract from the novel is read and commented upon by two specially-selected and independent ABNA reviewers. This is what the reviewers had to say about my extract.
ABNA Expert Reviewer 1
What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?
Interesting historical fare...well composed prose with imaginative descriptions, punchy verbs, believable characters, respect to time and place. The story flowed with authentic dialogue. I wanted more; I will read this if it is published. Historical fiction is a weighty endeavor as the author has to employ such lengthy research. This author has done the work as well as honing writing skills that are delightful to read.
What aspect needs the most work?
There are grammatical and punctuation mistakes, but too few to mention. They will be picked up by copy editors.
What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?
A fine historical drama highlighting the onset of the railway system in 1800's London. Strongly written characters, flawed and likeable alike, carry the plot, while inventive descriptive words, assorted verbs, and similes dance us through the pages.
Very well written. Interesting conception. I wish you all the best. If published, I will purchase this book as I am interested in what is happening.
Good luck. You deserve many accolades for this fine offering.
Very well written. Interesting conception. I wish you all the best. If published, I will purchase this book as I am interested in what is happening.
Good luck. You deserve many accolades for this fine offering.
ABNA Expert Reviewer 2
What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?
The scene between Robert and Mr Robinson is very well done. Nice!
What aspect needs the most work?
What I have seen so far is well written.
What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?
This is nicely done. It's very evocative of the time period, the settings are very vivid and the characters well drawn. Very well written!
ABNA have now made the quarter final extracts available for general review. It would be really helpful to have reviews of my extract on site, so if you have time please visit, read and review. My category is Historical Fiction and my extract from 'Mr Stephenson's Regret' is no. 40. There is rather a long-winded link below which should take you direct to the Kindle download link. Many thanks.
http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Stephensons-Regret-ebook/dp/B004TEYSXS/ref=br_lf_m_1000669141_2_40_ttl?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&pf_rd_p=1291986942&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_t=1401&pf_rd_i=1000669141&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1SDTH0AR7YEPPNQ8299G
I have reprinted below the extract from Mr Stephenson's Regret that was submitted for the award. If you like, you could read the extract here and leave your review at the site above. Whichever way you go, I appreciate your time on this.
Extract
MR STEPHENSON’S REGRET
Extract from beginnning of novel
I
He could not apprehend this stillness before him.
Death, of course, had presented its calling card frequently enough. Thrice in six years he had worn deep mourning: for his stepmother, for his own dear Frances, and now, when most alone, for his father. The women had seemed graceful on the satin pillow, such calm repose a memory and a comfort; he had known them like this in health. George was never still. Not a year ago, prowling with boredom in Robert’s Westminster rooms, he had challenged Bidder to a wrestle and between them they broke so many of the chairs in the outer office that son was moved to send father the joiner’s repair bill. Paid promptly and with a cheerful accompanying note. Not a year ago.
The merest movement at his shoulder brought Robert back to the parlour where the coffin lay. Mr Eyre’s instinct for punctuality had trumped his carefully-cultivated discretion.
‘Of course, yes.’
Robert withdrew to give the cabinet-maker space and privacy to complete his duties, turned back at the door for one last glimpse of his father’s folded hands, and thus sent Eyre’s apprentice into a guilty spasm, caught in the act of positioning the lid for closure. The boy froze, held by his master’s glare until Robert quit the room.
In the hallway, Eyre’s business partner John Robinson waited, idly brushing the nap of his hat. Its weeper trailed almost to the floor. Robinson had a ruddy complexion that spoke more of butcher than draper. Red-skinned cheese to Mr Eyre’s chalk. No amount of black crape could solemnify this man’s demeanour, though he was not so much blithe as brash. He delivered solicitude with an air of familiarity that seemed to Robert inappropriate, and ultimately self-serving.
‘Ah, sir, your papa,’ he said as Robert came near. ‘What a man he was.’
It seemed an innocent enough remark, but Robert found himself provoked by it. ‘Forgive me, Mr Robinson,’ he said, ‘but I prefer to wait for my father’s interment before I discuss his character or achievements in the past tense. I still have him close about me.’
‘Of course, I could not agree more,’ said Robinson. He failed to repress his smile as he studied the effect of the polishing on his hat. ‘The sentiments of our town exactly. We all feel especially close to Mr Stephenson - I refer to the late lamented Mr Stephenson saving your presence, sir - very close indeed at this time.’ Robert wanted to say that was not what he meant at all, but the undertaker continued. ‘Remarkable how the whole of Chesterfield is closing for the duration, sir. Such is our respect.’
‘I saw some notices to the effect.’
‘Mmm. From twelve till two. Quite soon now.’
They fell silent, eyes averted, as if listening for the sounds of the town closing beyond the gates of Tapton House. What could be heard instead were the quiet murmurs of funeral guests gathered in the drawing room, waiting the summons to take their respective places in the cortège, and the tap of hammer on nail from the room behind them. Robert felt for his waistcoat pocket, recalled he had left his watch wrapped in a handkerchief in his dressing chamber, and looked across to check the time on the longcase clock in the hall. It was stopped, marking the time of his father’s death. A nerve quickened in Robert’s temple, and he looked quickly away again, to witness Robinson in a frank appraisal of his client’s mourning-clothes. Unabashed, the man smiled genially.
‘Black Peter’s?’
‘Pardon me?’
‘I imagine they would be your supplier, sir.’
‘Jays’ of Regent Street.’
‘Ah, Jays’. A reputable firm, but I like to think we do as well, sir, in a provincial sort of way.’
‘No doubt.’
The undertaker straightened his own cuffs. ‘I’ll hazard the greater part of this afternoon’s procession will bear witness to that fact. I mean, as to their elegance, including the neighbourhood gentry and members of the corporation, not merely the town officers whom we have fitted, so to speak, in common, as becomes the pomp of the occasion.’
Robert winced on his father’s behalf at pomp, but had no time to voice an opinion before Robinson leaned in to him somewhat to say, ‘On which note, I have taken a certain liberty, sir, notwithstanding the letter of your instructions but, I’m sure you’ll agree, very much within the spirit of this sombre occasion, to employ a modest band of mutes to precede your father’s hearse in suitably sober fashion. Just four, to be precise. It is usual.’
This was the latest of the upstart’s repeated attempts to make the funeral more elaborate than his client believed necessary. Robert muttered testily. ‘I asked for no mutes.’
‘Which of course I noted, sir.’ Robinson was imperturbable. ‘But being privy to the arrangements made by the mayor and the corporation, I felt emboldened... Why, the procession is likely to be three hundred strong.’
‘Is that not pomp enough, without mutes?’
‘My further consideration was for the horses, sir. As you know, they are not so biddable as your locomotive engines. My fear is that the hearse may break off somewhat from the pedestrian traffic, should we not have our trained mourners marching in front to act by way of a check on the progress of the hearse. I believe your father used to do the same with men and flags, when the railways was new.’
Robert could not stop himself rising to the man’s impertinence. ‘Quite wrong, sir, except where appointed by interfering bodies who thought they knew better. My father dismissed them as entirely unnecessary. Such is the case with your mutes. You may stand them down; I neither wish to see them today, nor tomorrow as an item on my bill.’
‘Well, that is a loss,’ said Robinson, though whether he meant for the event or for the account was not clear until he risked a final throw. ‘I may be a little out of touch with London society, but I’m sure if your poor father could still be present with us he would turn a phrase often employed in our community. Expectation is duty. He appreciated more than most how Tapton and the great houses are looked upon to help define the better...’
‘Don’t...’ By now Robert was struggling to contain his emotions. ‘Do not, sir, presume to lecture me on my father’s opinions. It is clear you knew him very little. I can tell you now, Robinson, that these arguments you have laid before Mr Robert Stephenson... If indeed you had the chance to put them rather to Mr George Stephenson, there is every likelihood that you would have been knocked down to the floor. I do not speak metaphorically.’
John Robinson had by no means over-estimated the strength of the retinue. By the time the mayor and members of the corporation joined the cortège at Tapton toll-bar, the pedestrian parade between the hearse and the lead mourning carriage bearing Robert and his relatives had grown to more than three hundred. Gentlemen and shopkeepers of the town slow-marched two abreast as they followed the glass-sided hearse. The mourners’ silence hallowed the sound of the wheels. Four black horses walked with practised dignity without the benefit of mutes, their black plumes appearing to nod acknowledgement to the onlookers who removed their hats in the traditional gesture of respect as they passed.
Robert could see little of this behind the blinds of his coach, except for occasional glimpses of the knots of working people gathered to watch at corners, bands of crape fashioned around an arm or a hat. The men, he guessed, would be from Clay Cross or Lockorford Colliery; perhaps some from the lime kilns at Ambergate. These, along with the rest of his father’s interests, he would have to take on himself now, additions to his own extensive portfolio. The thought wearied him in the circumstances, and he sank back into the black leather of his seat. He gazed listlessly through the gap afforded by the screen, until one face in the crowd caused him to sit up and even pluck at the blind to stare behind him as the carriage started to climb the hill.
‘Somebody you know?’ from cousin George opposite, watching him.
‘Kit Heppel, I am convinced it was. You remember Kit?’
‘I believe I do. Is old Kit still breathing?’
‘Unless his ghost has come to pay respect. But surely Kit could not have travelled such a long way to stand and watch the hearse go past.’
George hooked the blind with his finger, looked out at the bystanders as he said, ‘Depend on it. Yesterday’s train was full. The station master was telling me of folk he had to move on that thought they could do worse than make his waiting room their hotel for the night.’ The cousin’s chuckle was poignant. ‘One who give him trouble said the railways belonged to his departed friend Mr George Stephenson, and that he would certainly have wanted him to stay at his pleasure.’
‘What did the station master do?’
‘He was minded to direct him to the house, but thought better of it and sent him on his way. It’s no hardship outdoors in this weather.’
‘Perhaps that was Kit himself.’
‘It would be like Kit, now I think on him.’
Robert was momentarily enlivened by the thought. ‘We must look out for old Kit at the church, cousin, invite him to come and take tea with us.’
At Trinity Church Robert soon realised that his hopes of finding Kit were slim among the press of people there. The great and good of the town formed a line along each side of Newbold Lane as the corporation and the principal mourners passed through their ranks, then followed them through the church doors, their black-edged tickets ready for the ushers. Some of the faithful workforce were allowed in also, while the remainder of the large crowd stood silently in the churchyard and the lane beyond, listening to the last peals of the funeral bell before the service proper began.
Robert was to some degree grateful for this popular show of consideration - he was aware how George would have relished it - but he felt his private grief intruded on, not least when the vault beneath the church floor was opened and his father’s oak coffin finally lowered to rest alongside his stepmother’s. Robert hesitated at the entrance. His arms opened slightly in what spectators may have interpreted as a motion of prayer or respect, but which in fact sprang from delicacy, as though he wanted to protect his parents from inquisitive eyes. He emptied himself of anguish at that moment, and became a cloak. At the end of the service he asked the carriage to return for him and waited until everyone had left before he studied the tablet in solitude.
Almost alone. As he stood by the communion rail he became aware of a figure seated at the back of the church. When he looked up it was with the fond anticipation of seeing Kit Heppel, but the Quaker hat atop the bowed head let him know who was praying there. Robert watched over this silent contemplation, smiled welcome when the man raised his head, but made no move to assist his slow progress with a walking-stick down the aisle - Edward Pease was as proudly independent as his late partner had been.
Pease nodded his appreciation of the simple inscription on the stone floor. ‘There is to be a commemorative plaque,’ Robert confessed. ‘For the wall, I believe. And perhaps a window.’
‘I was dismayed to learn,’ said Pease unexpectedly, ‘that no petition had been made to the queen.’
‘Petition?’
‘For thy father’s interment inside Westminster Abbey. Why should he not have been laid alongside Thomas Telford?’
‘They might have made uncomfortable bed-fellows. There was no harsher critic of his methods of working than Telford. He opposed us, remember, on the question of using locomotives for the Liverpool line. And did it with a vengeance - we almost lost our great opportunity.’
‘Telford was singing for his supper, that was all - it meant nothing.’
The old man seemed tetchy. Robert had made light of his remarks, but now he saw they were seriously made. ‘You surprise me, Edward, condoning such grandness. Do you really feel my father should be in the Abbey?’
Pease clutched Robert by the arm. ‘My religion stands no man above another, but for achievement genuinely earned. The two great engineers of their time, Telford and Stephenson. Why is one not given the respect he merits as well as the other? And who was here today?’
‘Why, hundreds. Some travelling for miles.’ He could feel his elder’s bones beneath the fingers at his sleeve.
‘Where is Russell? Where is Peel? Is the Duke too busy quelling Chartists? There is no-one here of that ilk, that is my plaint. It is a disgrace.’
Robert was troubled by the idea that he may have been remiss. Perhaps his brain had been overwhelmed by the shock of his father’s death - it had not crossed his mind that neither the country’s leaders nor the first rank of the nobility had applied for representation at the funeral. He felt impelled to put up some defence, but whether for them, his father, or himself he was unsure. ‘I’m... My father would have wished for no greater comfort than to be with his true love again, and... for no greater honour than he has received today from the people whose society he cherished, and whose lives he has improved so much.’
‘Well said, dear friend,’ Pease granted. He relinquished his grip somewhat, maintained hold on Robert’s arm for support now, less for emphasis. ‘Thou knows I would be the last to deny such simple ends. For all that, I feel thy father’s wider contribution has not been acknowledged as it should be, and I see offence in the absence of prime movers.’
Pease poked his walking-stick at the floor with a vestige of irritation as they turned to leave the church. Robert accompanied him in silence until they reached the gate, thoughts racing on the nature of the offence that Pease referred to. He surmised that this outburst had much to do with Pease feeling personally slighted by the establishment’s apparent indifference to George and his works, as if by implication it degraded his own contribution.
Outside the church gate Robert’s carriage was already returned, waiting for him in the sunlight. A servant closed his hand over a small bell that threatened to tinkle at the harness.
‘Please come back to the house with me,’ Robert said to Pease. ‘There are friends present you will not have seen for many a month, I dare say.’
‘Pray excuse me that. I’m cold comfort in company. Besides, I have my journey planned. When dost return to London?’
‘I travel on the morrow, and have resolved to avoid my office until Monday week.’
‘Do I trespass too heavily on propriety should I offer myself as a guest at Gloucester Square on the Second of the Ninth?’
The proposal was warmly received and their parting was affectionate, but Robert was still very much disturbed by what Edward Pease had to say in the church, and he returned to Tapton House in a restless state of mind.
Dinner that evening was an awkward affair, though it was confined to family members, in due respect. The fault, Robert thought at first, was that the meal was served in the new style à la russe. Consequently the diners had no spread to comment upon and nothing to do but wait for the servants to carry the food in dish by dish and pass around them, constantly appearing at one’s elbow to add a helping, and further stultify the sporadic conversation. This was presumably an innovation of the new housekeeper; his father had always enjoyed the business of carving at the table, and heartily enjoined his guests to take their part in handing around the plentiful side-dishes at each remove.
Soon enough Robert realised it was not the new housekeeper to blame for the inhibited mood, though the fact that Tapton House recently had a vacancy which she filled was germane. Seated at the opposite end of the board to Robert, a blot of black against the scarlet and mahogany, was the third Mrs Stephenson - that is, the widow in her weeds. Six months before, his father had relieved her of her housekeeper’s situation by marrying her, to the surprise of many and the certain consternation of those now around the dining table. Their unease did not spring from class difference - if truth be told the Gregory bloodline was an atom or two purer than the Stephenson - nor much from disappointment over the inheritance; George had told them for years what to expect in his will, and Robert was executor in possession, though of course the widow had to be accommodated. It was simply that they did not care for her, and had failed to appreciate their esteemed relative’s attraction for a much younger woman. Those who had met her before his death had found her a baleful presence even in what should have been the first flush of marriage, and now - while strangely devoid of any sign of real grief despite the lock of George’s white hair mounted in her mourning-brooch - she cast a deeper pall over proceedings than was called for by convention. Robert had detected an incipient pretentiousness from first meeting, and lately suspected her as the instigator of Robinson’s audacious attempts to make the funeral more extravagant than seemly.
After the meal, when the men had their fill of spicy zests and joined the ladies for tea and cakes in the drawing room, the conversation flowed more easily, and became quite animated once Mrs Stephenson had retired early to bed. Inevitably it turned on memories of the dear departed and especially his early life, occasioned by Robert relating Aunt Nelly’s remark that she had counted ninety windows in this house, being eighty-nine more than George was able to look through as a bairn in their old cottage at Wylam.
‘It would be like Mam to mention that blessed cottage,’ said cousin Meg, ‘since she did so every day of her life.’ The others laughed, encouraging Meg into affectionate mimicry. ‘Aye, one room and eight on us to live an breathe in it. It was turns for this and turns for that. Whose turn to sit nearest the fire. Whose turn to scrub the netty seat. Life was made up of turns them days.’
‘Who’d get the crusts off the loaf,’ put in another.
‘Who’d get the warmest place in the bed. Right in the middle, with Mammy and...’
‘Bed! My old man had to mek do wi the shaky-down,’ cried George through the laughter; ‘Squashed between Uncle George and Uncle Jemmy, wi nowt but a cast-off from the gin horse for a blanket.’
Robert listened, wryly amused at this skit on their elders’ attempts to outdo each other in tales of past poverty and hardship. It was an old Stephenson trait to vaunt privation and the way they rose above it; this despite none of them attending school until, at the age of eighteen, George started paying threepence a week from his meagre pitman’s wages in return for Robin Cowens teaching him to read and write. Robert’s surviving cousins knew the stories well enough to lampoon them, but were all too young to have experienced genuine hardship for themselves, as he had early in his life. Not one of them was spoiled, but they had grown up on the fringes of affluence.
The pity of it was that - but for Aunt Anne, still living as far as Robert knew in America - all the children brought up in the Wylam cottage were now dead. Here was their line, here in this room. Who among them would help to provide another Stephenson generation?
After another hour or so the company began to drift off to their beds. When he was at last alone, Robert took a lighted candle and a glass of French brandy, not to his bedroom but to his father’s library. There were more models and curios than books, and several plans and sketches still open on the large table, as if George had just now left the room and may return to resume his work at any moment. Robert looked about him. In one corner of the room he spied a breeding hutch for rabbits, evidently under repair. On a small table near the window was a tall glass cylinder containing a straightened cucumber, the proud result of one of his father’s many horticultural experiments. There was a sectioned drawing of a bee-hive, and a flowing diagram labelled, in a familiar hand, foriger’s dance, the slight misspelling causing the son’s eyes to prick for the first time that day.
Robert moved towards the armchair by the fireplace. As he did so the candlelight shone on a Parian marble bust of Wellington, from his glory days at Waterloo, in pride of place on the mantelshelf. Robert set the candle next to the bust and lingered at the fireplace. The Duke looked past him at something stately and remote; and in truth, though Robert’s eyes stayed on the Duke’s beaked features, he was no longer really seeing them, for the figure had started a train of thought that took him back to his encounter with Pease in Trinity Church. He drained his glass of brandy, placed the empty glass next to the candle and sat down in the armchair. He stared into the empty fireplace until the study clock chimed once at the quarter-hour. As though that was the signal for him to take a prescription, Robert reached into an inside pocket of his mourning-coat, pulled out a slender silver phial. He shook the phial absently before uncorking it, then swallowed the contents in one draught. He carefully replaced the phial in his pocket, closed his eyes, and surrendered to the depths of the armchair.
II
He could not recall his mother’s face except as an abstract impression, a mere shading in pastels, wraith-like and pallid. His first clear memory was of his father lifting him over a hedge into some woods. He was set down in the long grass while his father straddled the hedge then picked Robert up again in his collier’s arms and carried him under the trees. There were just the two of them, certainly, and a distant note that Robert knew later to be the bell from the chapel below the fields, where his mother would be attending service.
George wanted to show him the nest of a song thrush, one couched low enough that he could pull himself up by a sturdy branch and crook Bobby into his left breast to see at close quarters. There were three spotted blue eggs within, the like of which George’s own father had shown him years before, and he had remembered always.
What Robert came to remember was the echo of gunshot deeper in the woods, and his father slinking down the trunk to lay his boy carefully at the base while he stole through trees to investigate. Left on his own, Robert soon began to bleat, bringing George quickly back to wrap his arms around and hush him, whispering ‘Ssh, Bobby, or I’ll be bound for the boat, son.’ The young pitman concealed himself behind the tree, Robert enveloped by him. He listened intently for the movement of men through the woods. Two spoke near enough for George to detect the tone of their voices - one peremptory, the other obsequious - but not so close as to hear the words. Robert, soothed by the rhythm of his father’s heart beating through his back, fell asleep in the warmth of him as they hid, pressed against the trunk.
When he awoke he was at George’s hip as his father strode down the hill to join the family at Dolly’s Field. This was the place where George in his bachelor days had turned the tables on the bully Ned Nelson, evading his ham-fisted blows and countering with tact and guile. Robert would come to know it as the picnic field, where all the outdoor feast days were held, as on this Easter Sunday. Practically the whole village was there, now the church and chapel services were over, some with kin who had walked miles from their homes to celebrate the holiday together. Sharing the brief hours of liberation; filling hearts and lungs with the pure swell of it. George had to step aside to make way for the cuddy race starting where the slope turned to flat. Elsewhere he could see children in pairs jarping eggs and in the distance a group running down to the stream, intent on sugar-cupping. His younger sister Anne and another girl were being teased by some youths from the village, but there looked to be no harm in them.
George soon found Fanny sitting on the grass with his parents and sister Nell, but it was Mabel, not his wife, who took her grandson in her lap while George told Old Bob about his near encounter with the gamekeeper. He could afford to laugh about it now that he was safe from the transport ship. While they were talking, Anne ran up to complain to her mother, ‘Look how I’ve lost my shoes that George made. John Nixon has lifted me and pinched them.’
George stood up and lifted Anne too, then let her down gently as she protested, favouring her with a hug. ‘He’ll gi you them back quick enough for the price of a kiss,’ he told her. ‘And don’t forget you’ve to lift his hat the morrow.’ He released Anne and hunkered down to touch his wife’s hand where she rested it over her smock. ‘I’m away for a turn at the hoying. Are you all right just yet?’ Fanny nodded and he wandered off to join the other young men gathered for the hammer-throwing while Nell took her turn with Robert, waggling her fingers to persuade him to leave the comfort of his granny’s lap and walk with her.
‘Did you see the sun dance this morning, Bobby?’ she asked him, not expecting an answer. Nelly was trying to cheer herself up. She had still not got over the disappointment of her betrayal by Daniel Jakes, who’d persuaded her to leave domestic service in London with the promise of marriage. She had returned home after a long and difficult passage up the coast to find that Jakes had wed someone else. Nell was left with no work, no savings and no lover. All around her she could see couples flirting with each other - even her chit sister Anne had an admirer now - while Nell, just twenty-one, had to play the maiden aunt. Still, Fanny had been thought of as an old maid too, long before George took her up, after his own heartbreak over Betty Hindmarsh.
‘Are you wantin to watch your daddy at the hammer?’ she asked, privately glad to have Bobby as her pretext for observing the miners at play. Some of them were stripped ready to the waist, as they might be at the coalface. Nelly was more shocked by others lolling on the grass, defying the Sabbath by swigging ale from stone pitchers. George was not among the inebriates, but stood easy, taller than many of his peers but not as thick-set as some, waiting his turn at the sport. When it came he took a firm grip of the sledgehammer, swung it back between his open legs and smoothly forward again, releasing and following the trajectory with outstretched hands as if beseeching the hammer to fly to the heavens. Which it almost did, to judge by the cheers of the spectators. Kit Heppel stepped forward and clapped a hand at George’s back.
‘Not bad for a brakesman, George,’ he said. ‘Yon’s well past the hewers’ anyhow.’
‘Brain beats brawn, Kit,’ said George, beaming. ‘I got the science on it, that’s the trick.’
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete